Teaching is not as easy as we imagine. There are some tips you can use in teaching for your better teaching performance. Arrange the seating to help, it means that the position of students can help teacher to teach in classroom. Maybe, you can try to re-arrange the desks. But, if the desks are impossible to be changed, the teacher can divide students into groups. Working on group makes the students talk more with their friends and make the teacher easier to control the students. Stand up when you’re directing activity, as a teacher you should know when you have to sit and when you have to stand. If you think that students do not need you, you might sit. But, for most activities in the language classroom it is important that the students can see you, especially your mouth and eyes. Besides, standing means that you can see the students clearly and you can use your eyes and hands effectively.
Look at the students, by looking at the students, the students will feel that they are involved. Your eyes also can be used instead of your hands to indicate who should answer a question. Use your hands to encourage and direct students, a simple gesture can indicate who is going to answer a question, or which pair of students should read a dialogue. Simple gesture, for example holding up one hand and shaking it from side to side, can be a sign that something is wrong. Use the back of your hand to point, is less intimidating rather than point in the conventional way. Use pauses to punctuate what you say, you can make very short pauses before each change in the use of language from, for example, instruction to example. Pauses are an important feature of the way the teacher uses language in the classroom. Vary your voice, this does not mean speaking in a “funny voice”. Pauses, stress and changes of pitch when you change from example. For example comment to instruction, will mean it is much easier to follow what you say.
Keep your language to a minimum when students are doing something, there are several important implications: Do not interrupt students unnecessarily while they are preparing something. Do not dominate discussion yourself. Do not tell the students what they want to say. Do not use more language than is necessary to direct and control classroom. Don’t commentate, students never know whether what you are saying is important or not. Any commentary you give should be help to the students, and not used either to reassure yourself or simply to fill up silence. Don’t be afraid of silence, silence has a valuable part to play in language lessons. Constant language is tiring, students need time to think. Because the room is silent, it doesn’t mean nothing is happening. The secret is a balance between activity and quiet moments for reflection. Don’t be afraid of noise, effective language teaching means giving the students a chance to speak. The reason they make more noise is because there is more constructive activity going on! Use pair work to increase student talking time-even if it seems chaos, to gain the most effective pair work, you should: Divide the group into pairs yourself and make sure that all the students know who they are working with and which role they are to take, make sure everyone knows the instruction, go round, listen, and check that they are doing it, stop the activity when it is clear that everyone is finished, follow up the pair work with a demonstration/summary from one or more pairs, make a habit of it! Use group work to increase student talking time, as with pair work, some use of the native language is unimportant. It can be used as preparation for a text or topic. Be explicit, classroom instruction and explanation should be simple, precise, and explicit. The more explicit your instructions, the easier it is for the students to concentrate on the content, rather than the organization of activities. Don’t ask “do you understand?”, maybe you can use some questions like “so far so good?” or “are there any questions?”. Don’t go ‘round the class’ if individuals can prepare particular examples, the guiding principle is simple: if the student is more likely to be able to ‘switch off’ if you follow a pattern, then you choose individuals to answer, if the emphasis is on speed and students will remain involved because of the pace, it is often more efficient to do things in an ‘obvious’ way. Admit your ignorance, teacher is also a human, so if your student asks a question and you don’t know the answer, don’t afraid to say that you cannot answer the question. Don’t give them an ad hoc explanation which later turns out to be untrue. Consult colleagues, why waste a long time wrestling with a problem or wading through reference book if a colleague can tell you in a few moments? There is a saying a trouble shared is a trouble halved, it is as true for the language teacher as for nobody else! Consult students, asking them questions to know what our students feel like did you particularly enjoy today’s lesson? Why not? Etc. Demonstrate, rather than explain, new activities, demonstrating reduce the amount of unnecessary teacher language, is explicit, gives an idea of timing, and is generally more effective than any explanation. Exploit real events, stimulate students into using language naturally. For the example, when you are sneezing, say excuse me..or when one of students is birthday, say happy birthday or something else. Divide the blackboard, you can divide the blackboard in three parts. The largest part is used to present the main material, and the rest can be used to support your explanation. Use the overhead prjoector to control what students see, by writing on the transparancy, teacher can control what are the students doing. Machinery will not solve all your problems, computer, OHP, viewer are only equipments. They cannot work by themselves. The best result will be achieved if teachers can operate the machinery effectively and efficiently. Expand, don’t clutter, as a teacher we should prepare what we will teach about. It might be funny if we are standing in front of the class, with a lot of people are watching you but you do not mastering the material. Prepare yourself first before teaching. Mastering the material will make you confidence, confidence make you relax while teaching, and if you are relax, you can make the students comfortable with your class.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Alexsander Irfan B.
The fourth meeting of micro teaching class was very interesting! I learned many things from it. At the first, Mr. Prast explained about Classroom management and General Tips. He taught how to make a best performance when you are practicing as a teacher. After that, he asked one of the students [volunteer] to come in front of class, to practice teaching. As usual, no body wanted to be a volunteer, so Mr. Prast made a lotery in order to get a "victim". He asked the date of that day, it was 17, 1+7=8 and he called the student in ordinal number 8 from above. And the "lucky" one was Nike. Everyone in the class shouted her, and she only smiled. Then, she came in front of the class. She started teaching by told us that she will teach Senior High School Students, so she wanted us to act like a senior high school students. First, she asked the students some general question like how are you? are you tired?etc. Suddenly, She asked me to come in front of class, maybe she saw that I was sleepy and leaning my head on the wall. In front of the class, she compared my height with my friend. She did it because her material was adjective comparison, and I think it was a good idea to present the material. From the set induction to set closure, she was very smooth. It looked that She had prepared it before. After she finished, the second "victim" was Cahyo. He looked very surprized when he got the turn. In confidence, he started teaching. The class was relax, too relax I think. The students already knew that Cahyo had not have prepared the material before, so we tried to ask Cahyo some "deadfall" questions.hehehe... He just only smiled when he cannot answer the students' questions. Actually, he was confidence enough. But, because he did not master the materials, he looked confused while teaching. From those two teaching practices, I learned that preparation is very important in teaching. Mastering the materials will make us confidence, and confidence will make us easier to present the materials effectively and relaxly.
